The Great Recession,Austerity and Inequality: Lessons from Ireland

The advent of the Great Recession and the widespread adoption of fiscal austerity policies have heightened concern about inequality and its effects. We examine how the distribution of income in Ireland—a country which experienced one of the most severe economic contractions—has evolved over the years 2008 to 2013. Standard cross‐sectional analysis of the income distribution shows broad stability in the Gini coefficient and in decile shares, with one main exception: the share of the bottom decile fell sharply, with the largest fall in average incomes being for that group. Longitudinal analysis shows that the falls in the average income for the bottom decile were not due to decreasing income for those remaining in the bottom decile, but to falls in income from those initially located in higher deciles. The extent of redistribution through taxes and transfers increased strongly, as measured by the Reynolds‐Smolensky index, which rose from 0.20 before the onset of the crisis to 0.27 in 2013. Analysis indicates that about three‐quarters of this increased redistribution is due to automatic stabilisers and one‐quarter to discretionary policy changes.     

The Japanisation of British industry? Instances from a high growth area

Here the authors make two arguments, Japanese industry is characterised by distinctive practices, but these predominate in only certain ‘leading edge’ sectors and were introduced mainly to ensure labour supply. Second, Britain's managers are increasingly outside the internal labour markets of large corporations. In this respect British firms are not becoming ‘Japanese’.     

Learning and fatigue during choice experiments: a comparison of online and mail survey modes

This study investigates the effect of survey mode on respondent learning and fatigue during repeated choice experiments. Stated preference data are obtained from an experiment concerning high‐speed Internet service conducted on samples of mail respondents and online respondents. We identify and estimate aspects of the error components for different subsets of the choice questions, for both mail and online respondents. Results show mail respondents answer questions consistently throughout a series of choice experiments, but the quality of the online respondents' answers declines. Therefore, while the online survey provides lower survey administration costs and reduced time between implementation and data analysis, such benefits come at the cost of less precise responses. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Trade imbalance in international message telephone services

An econometric model is estimated to identify determinants of trade imbalance in international message telephone services markets. Results indicate that asymmetric market structure is important in explaining bilateral market imbalances for high income country pairs. For low and high income country pairs, GDP per capita is the dominant cause of traffic imbalances. The findings suggest that telecommunications liberalization policies are effective in reducing distortions in international traffic flows and settlement payments. However, liberalization should be accompanied by developmental programmes that enhance income per capita and telecommunications network investment in developing countries. Such programmes may be effective in providing a more equitable distribution of the gains from telecommunications reform across countries.     

Price competition in the market for business telecommunications services

We estimate a two-step control-function model that relates incumbent prices for small-business telecommunications services to the number of facilities-based entrants, cost, demand, regulatory conditions, and a correction for endogenous market structure. Results show that the price effects from entry are understated in ordinary least squares regressions. When controlling for endogeneity, prices are negatively related to the number of entrants, indicating that markets without a competitive presence could exhibit market power. These findings should prove helpful to the Federal Communications Commission and other State regulators determining the conditions under which price and other forms of regulation may be relaxed.     

Class Formation and Localism in an Emerging Bureaucracy: British Bank Workers, 1880–1960

This article uses a case study of the spatial and career mobility of bank workers from Lloyds, a leading British bank, to explore the relationship between class formation and spatial mobility. The article argues against the idea that the large‐scale concentration and bureaucratization of the British banking industry in the early years of the twentieth century saw the emergence of a mobile middle‐class spiralist or cosmopolitan. We use archival data from Lloyds Bank to argue that the emergence of Lloyds as a large‐scale national bank involved a compromise with localized interests rather than a detachment of the bank from local concerns. We use data on the career histories of a representative sample of male bank employees to argue that spatial mobility was organized largely within regions and helped to consolidate the prospects of rural bank workers. We argue that London emerged as a distinctive ‘hub’ for banking careers, with significant amounts of movement to and from London from all regions. We therefore demonstrate how localized and rural cultures were sedimented within a large, national bureaucracy, and that a genuine ‘spiralist’ structure did not emerge. En s’appuyant sur une étude de cas relative à la mobilité géographique et professionnelle du personnel de la Lloyds, l’une des premières banques britanniques, cet article examine le lien entre la formation d’une classe et la mobilité spatiale. Il combat l’idée que la concentration et la bureaucratisation à grande échelle du secteur bancaire britannique au début du XXe siècle a fait na? tre une classe moyenne mobile en spirale ou cosmopolite. Les données d’archives de la Lloyds révèlent que son développement en tant que grande banque nationale s’est accompagné d’un compromis avec les intér? ts locaux plutôt que d’une indifférence à l’égard de ces préoccupations. Les informations sur les carrières d’un échantillon représentatif d’employés de banque masculins permettent d’établir que la mobilité géographique a été organisée largement au plan régional, contribuant à consolider les perspectives des employés en zone rurale. Londres est apparu comme un ‘pôle’ particulier dans les carrières bancaires, avec un nombre considérable de mutations vers et de la capitale à partir de toutes les régions. L’article montre ainsi comment des cultures locales et rurales se sont sédimentées au sein d’une importante bureaucratie nationale et qu’aucune structure ‘en spirale’ pure n’en est issue.